Between 1968, when Lyndon Johnson left the White House, and the end of the century, the nation elected only two Democratic presidents. Both were Southern populists who had been careful to differentiate themselves from Great Society and their liberal predecessors. That all changed in 2008, when Barack Obama defeated the party-establishment candidate, Hillary Clinton, and then Republican John McCain with a campaign that pledged to end political and ideological polarization with pragmatic problem-solving—from a liberal point of departure.

Before 2008, Obama looked like a liberal of moderate temperament. He had the bad luck to take office at a time of financial and economic crises overshadowing everything else. He has said since that he underestimated at the time the depth of the crises. That no doubt led him, before growth and stability had been restored, to undertake in 2009 a remake of the entire health sector. Both his stimulus package and healthcare proposal were mainly designed by House Democratic leaders and the interest groups that supported his 2008 campaign. There was no serious attempt, in formulating either program, to draw Republicans into participation, as LBJ had done in 1965. Provisions allowing the sale of health-insurance products across state lines, and providing for meaningful tort reform, could have done that without forfeiting Democratic support. Trial lawyers would have objected but not jeopardized the bill's passage.

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As a result, Obama and Democratic House leaders needed the vote of every Democratic House member to pass the health bill. He got his bill, but 63 House Democrats lost their seats in the midterm elections, including many moderates. They were mainly replaced by Republican Tea Partiers, guaranteeing the angry congressional polarization since.

Obama’s 2012 reelection is little comfort for Democrats. His total vote was smaller than in 2008, and it did not constitute a mandate for any particular agenda. It instead depended on two things: first, an unprecedentedly skillful identification and mobilization of key Obama voter groups that had grown in importance over the previous four years; and second, highly effective scare campaigns designed to convince those groups that Mitt Romney and Republicans were heartless plutocrats, servants of wealth, and enemies of women, Latinos, African Americans, and the middle class.

That approach is unlikely to work for another Democratic presidential candidate in 2016. Republicans, for one thing, are unlikely to nominate someone as short on political gut instincts as Romney. And some voter groups are unlikely, four years from now, to be so easily motivated. Immigration reform, for instance, might remove a crucial barrier to socially conservative Latino voters moving to a Republican Party whose family, religious, and social values are like their own. Most of all, voters will still be searching for the reductions in political toxicity that Obama pledged in 2008 to produce.

Democrats need to return to the mindset of their most skillful prior leaders. Those leaders, from the New Deal onward, always began by asking: What are our country's most pressing needs?

Democrats need to return to the mindset of their most skillful prior leaders. Those leaders, from the New Deal onward, always began by asking: What are our country's most pressing needs? Then, what are our proposals to meet those needs? Finally, how can we mobilize majorities in the country and Congress to enact those proposals?

Comprehensive healthcare reform was a worthy priority for the administration. It was undertaken, however, at a time when the country remained financially and economically unstable—and when people of all outlooks were wary about an ambitious remake of a huge part of the economy. Unlike Medicare, Medicaid, or the Medicare prescription-drug benefit, it was formulated and narrowly passed on a one-party basis without public opinion supporting it. If he were to do it over, Obama would no doubt take the Lyndon Johnson/Ted Kennedy approach to healthcare reform and enlist a few Republican leaders and ideas, such as tort reform or selling insurance across state lines.

That mindset does not focus on one-upping Republicans in the next news cycle or gaining an edge for the next election. It focuses on serious governance.

Environmental, cultural, social, and other issues have moved forward on the national agenda since FDR and LBJ laid down New Deal and Great Society policy frameworks for the country. But the Big Two issues—the economy and national security—remain the Big Two, and remain to be addressed.

The first imperative is to provide long-term financial and economic stability to the country. Residual federal debt of $17 to $31 trillion, depending on whether you count off-budget obligations, must be reduced. This is necessary not only to fend off inflation and protect the dollar but also to facilitate ongoing governance. From a liberal or Democratic viewpoint, there can be few public initiatives if an ever-growing share of public resources is gobbled up by debt service.

This will require a bipartisan fix to taxes, spending, and entitlements along the lines proposed by Obama's Simpson-Bowles commission. Most analysts were surprised, when the commission was constituted, that Obama required a weighted rather than simple majority vote by the commission to send the package to Congress for an up-or-down vote; several Democratic commission members proposed lobbying their fellow Democratic members so that a sufficient majority would trigger a congressional vote.

But Obama opted instead to flay Republicans for their supposed hostility to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. He clearly did not recognize that, unless dealt with comprehensively and in bipartisan fashion, this issue would remain unresolved. A relatively painless combination of measures, recognized for decades as a solution, would include cost-of-living adjustments; small increases in the ages for Social Security and Medicare eligibility; and lifting the cap on earnings subject to tax withholding. The only thing missing has been the political will to apply the solution now rather than in a later presidential term. The next president will have to do it all over again.

Another part of this challenge—comprehensive tax reform—must also be addressed on a bipartisan basis. Both parties give lip service to the scrubbing of loopholes and preferences from the tax code. Economists from both liberal and conservative schools attest that these tax breaks distort economic decision-making—favoring one sector or activity over another—and impede economic growth and job creation. They also cut a huge hole in the federal revenue base. Much present debate about raising or cutting taxes would recede if genuine tax reform brought fresh trillions into the Treasury.

On the national-security side, Democrats need to reconsider the Wilsonianism that has pervaded their thinking since World War I. Both parties, but Democrats more than Republicans, have wanted "to make the world safe for democracy" with interventions in many places where American vital interests were not at stake. Even after the tragedy of Vietnam, which Kennedy and Johnson misread as part of the Cold War, we have been drawn into interventions in many countries on bases other than a cold assessment of their importance to our own security. The 2011 Libyan intervention and recent threat to intervene in Syria were not justifiable on that basis. The allure of "nation building," in which Des Moines might be replicated in Baghdad or Kabul, must be resisted. We would do well to perfect democracy and nation-build in our own country before decreeing it elsewhere. A public backlash is building against such interventions, which could hamstring future presidents if and when our vital interests truly are at stake.

The most successful Democratic programs have been universal and "horizontal"—applying to all citizens equally—rather than "vertical," applying only to discrete groups.

Democrats also must reconsider the habit of seeing Americans as senior citizens, African Americans, Latinos, Asians, Jews, single mothers, Baby Boomers, Generation X and Y members, secular or religious, higher-educated or not, debtors or savers, union or non-union, wealthy or members of the middle class. These are useful categories for pollsters and campaign consultants as they try to figure out what certain people think and the best way to influence them. But they are a trap for policymakers.

The most successful Democratic programs historically have been universal and "horizontal"—that is, applying to all citizens equally—rather than "vertical," applying only to discrete and targeted groups. Eligibility may vary for universal, horizontal programs, but most citizens understand and accept that. Medicare and Social Security remain broadly popular, if in need of long-term financial fixes. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 is also still essentially unchallenged, because it banned discrimination for or against any citizen on the basis of race, gender, religion, ethnicity, or other irrelevant factors. The present day gay-rights and gay-marriage movements are gaining broad and rapid acceptance because they so obviously fall within the Civil Rights Act's context.

But vertical, targeted programs and policies inevitably have caused disruptions and divisions in society. Problems especially began for Democrats when some of their former core supporters perceived that certain defined groups were being singled out for benefits others did not receive. Affirmative action (a Nixon Administration invention) was perceived to have supplanted the previous everyone-free-and-equal concepts that were the cornerstone of the CRA. The tax code rewards some industries and economic activity handsomely whereas ordinary wage-earning families struggle and feel shafted by faithless policymakers. Both major parties currently see immigration reform as helping or hurting them electorally. It should be seen, instead, as a means of keeping faith with our Statue of Liberty ideals while at the same time providing the ordered immigration and border control that any nation must maintain.

Wedge politics and tailored political messaging can bring a campaign or even a presidency short-term success. But, for the longer run, most Americans feel they are in it together and badly want bipartisan action to keep the economy stable and growing, to keep the country safe here and abroad, and to keep American society open and fair. Americans want from Democrats what Obama promised in his 2008 campaign. Financial and economic crises diverted him, he opted for partisanship with his first-term initiatives, and the resulting gridlock leaves Democrats with three years to consider their future path.

By 2016, this veteran hopes, party leaders will conclude that the big things should be tackled first and that, because of their difficulty, they must be addressed on a bipartisan basis. May they also conclude that there is more to gain by uniting all Americans than by treating them separately as political subgroups.

Republicans? Democrats should simply forget them for now. The GOP is fractious, confused, and leaderless after two consecutive presidential-election defeats. Democrats have been there themselves in the past—what they need now is introspection.

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Even when a dentist kills an adored lion, and everyone is furious, there’s loftier righteousness to be had.

Now is the point in the story of Cecil the lion—amid non-stop news coverage and passionate social-media advocacy—when people get tired of hearing about Cecil the lion. Even if they hesitate to say it.

But Cecil fatigue is only going to get worse. On Friday morning, Zimbabwe’s environment minister, Oppah Muchinguri, called for the extradition of the man who killed him, the Minnesota dentist Walter Palmer. Muchinguri would like Palmer to be “held accountable for his illegal action”—paying a reported $50,000 to kill Cecil with an arrow after luring him away from protected land. And she’s far from alone in demanding accountability. This week, the Internet has served as a bastion of judgment and vigilante justice—just like usual, except that this was a perfect storm directed at a single person. It might be called an outrage singularity.

Writing used to be a solitary profession. How did it become so interminably social?

Whether we’re behind the podium or awaiting our turn, numbing our bottoms on the chill of metal foldout chairs or trying to work some life into our terror-stricken tongues, we introverts feel the pain of the public performance. This is because there are requirements to being a writer. Other than being a writer, I mean. Firstly, there’s the need to become part of the writing “community”, which compels every writer who craves self respect and success to attend community events, help to organize them, buzz over them, and—despite blitzed nerves and staggering bowels—present and perform at them. We get through it. We bully ourselves into it. We dose ourselves with beta blockers. We drink. We become our own worst enemies for a night of validation and participation.

Forget credit hours—in a quest to cut costs, universities are simply asking students to prove their mastery of a subject.

MANCHESTER, Mich.—Had Daniella Kippnick followed in the footsteps of the hundreds of millions of students who have earned university degrees in the past millennium, she might be slumping in a lecture hall somewhere while a professor droned. But Kippnick has no course lectures. She has no courses to attend at all. No classroom, no college quad, no grades. Her university has no deadlines or tenure-track professors.

Instead, Kippnick makes her way through different subject matters on the way to a bachelor’s in accounting. When she feels she’s mastered a certain subject, she takes a test at home, where a proctor watches her from afar by monitoring her computer and watching her over a video feed. If she proves she’s competent—by getting the equivalent of a B—she passes and moves on to the next subject.

The Wall Street Journal’s eyebrow-raising story of how the presidential candidate and her husband accepted cash from UBS without any regard for the appearance of impropriety that it created.

The Swiss bank UBS is one of the biggest, most powerful financial institutions in the world. As secretary of state, Hillary Clinton intervened to help it out with the IRS. And after that, the Swiss bank paid Bill Clinton $1.5 million for speaking gigs. TheWall Street Journal reported all that and more Thursday in an article that highlights huge conflicts of interest that the Clintons have created in the recent past.

The piece begins by detailing how Clinton helped the global bank.

“A few weeks after Hillary Clinton was sworn in as secretary of state in early 2009, she was summoned to Geneva by her Swiss counterpart to discuss an urgent matter. The Internal Revenue Service was suing UBS AG to get the identities of Americans with secret accounts,” the newspaper reports. “If the case proceeded, Switzerland’s largest bank would face an impossible choice: Violate Swiss secrecy laws by handing over the names, or refuse and face criminal charges in U.S. federal court. Within months, Mrs. Clinton announced a tentative legal settlement—an unusual intervention by the top U.S. diplomat. UBS ultimately turned over information on 4,450 accounts, a fraction of the 52,000 sought by the IRS.”

There’s no way this man could be president, right? Just look at him: rumpled and scowling, bald pate topped by an entropic nimbus of white hair. Just listen to him: ranting, in his gravelly Brooklyn accent, about socialism. Socialism!

And yet here we are: In the biggest surprise of the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, this thoroughly implausible man, Bernie Sanders, is a sensation.

He is drawing enormous crowds—11,000 in Phoenix, 8,000 in Dallas, 2,500 in Council Bluffs, Iowa—the largest turnout of any candidate from any party in the first-to-vote primary state. He has raised $15 million in mostly small donations, to Hillary Clinton’s $45 million—and unlike her, he did it without holding a single fundraiser. Shocking the political establishment, it is Sanders—not Martin O’Malley, the fresh-faced former two-term governor of Maryland; not Joe Biden, the sitting vice president—to whom discontented Democratic voters looking for an alternative to Clinton have turned.

During the multi-country press tour for Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation, not even Jon Stewart has dared ask Tom Cruise about Scientology.

During the media blitz for Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation over the past two weeks, Tom Cruise has seemingly been everywhere. In London, he participated in a live interview at the British Film Institute with the presenter Alex Zane, the movie’s director, Christopher McQuarrie, and a handful of his fellow cast members. In New York, he faced off with Jimmy Fallon in a lip-sync battle on The Tonight Show and attended the Monday night premiere in Times Square. And, on Tuesday afternoon, the actor recorded an appearance on The Daily Show With Jon Stewart, where he discussed his exercise regimen, the importance of a healthy diet, and how he still has all his own hair at 53.

Stewart, who during his career has won two Peabody Awards for public service and the Orwell Award for “distinguished contribution to honesty and clarity in public language,” represented the most challenging interviewer Cruise has faced on the tour, during a challenging year for the actor. In April, HBO broadcast Alex Gibney’s documentary Going Clear, a film based on the book of the same title by Lawrence Wright exploring the Church of Scientology, of which Cruise is a high-profile member. The movie alleges, among other things, that the actor personally profited from slave labor (church members who were paid 40 cents an hour to outfit the star’s airplane hangar and motorcycle), and that his former girlfriend, the actress Nazanin Boniadi, was punished by the Church by being forced to do menial work after telling a friend about her relationship troubles with Cruise. For Cruise “not to address the allegations of abuse,” Gibney said in January, “seems to me palpably irresponsible.” But in The Daily Show interview, as with all of Cruise’s other appearances, Scientology wasn’t mentioned.

An attack on an American-funded military group epitomizes the Obama Administration’s logistical and strategic failures in the war-torn country.

Last week, the U.S. finally received some good news in Syria:.After months of prevarication, Turkey announced that the American military could launch airstrikes against Islamic State positions in Syria from its base in Incirlik. The development signaled that Turkey, a regional power, had at last agreed to join the fight against ISIS.

The announcement provided a dose of optimism in a conflict that has, in the last four years, killed over 200,000 and displaced millions more. Days later, however, the positive momentum screeched to a halt. Earlier this week, fighters from the al-Nusra Front, an Islamist group aligned with al-Qaeda, reportedly captured the commander of Division 30, a Syrian militia that receives U.S. funding and logistical support, in the countryside north of Aleppo. On Friday, the offensive escalated: Al-Nusra fighters attacked Division 30 headquarters, killing five and capturing others. According to Agence France Presse, the purpose of the attack was to obtain sophisticated weapons provided by the Americans.

The Islamic State is no mere collection of psychopaths. It is a religious group with carefully considered beliefs, among them that it is a key agent of the coming apocalypse. Here’s what that means for its strategy—and for how to stop it.

What is the Islamic State?

Where did it come from, and what are its intentions? The simplicity of these questions can be deceiving, and few Western leaders seem to know the answers. In December, The New York Times published confidential comments by Major General Michael K. Nagata, the Special Operations commander for the United States in the Middle East, admitting that he had hardly begun figuring out the Islamic State’s appeal. “We have not defeated the idea,” he said. “We do not even understand the idea.” In the past year, President Obama has referred to the Islamic State, variously, as “not Islamic” and as al-Qaeda’s “jayvee team,” statements that reflected confusion about the group, and may have contributed to significant strategic errors.

Some say the so-called sharing economy has gotten away from its central premise—sharing.

This past March, in an up-and-coming neighborhood of Portland, Maine, a group of residents rented a warehouse and opened a tool-lending library. The idea was to give locals access to everyday but expensive garage, kitchen, and landscaping tools—such as chainsaws, lawnmowers, wheelbarrows, a giant cider press, and soap molds—to save unnecessary expense as well as clutter in closets and tool sheds.

The residents had been inspired by similar tool-lending libraries across the country—in Columbus, Ohio; in Seattle, Washington; in Portland, Oregon. The ethos made sense to the Mainers. “We all have day jobs working to make a more sustainable world,” says Hazel Onsrud, one of the Maine Tool Library’s founders, who works in renewable energy. “I do not want to buy all of that stuff.”

A controversial treatment shows promise, especially for victims of trauma.

It’s straight out of a cartoon about hypnosis: A black-cloaked charlatan swings a pendulum in front of a patient, who dutifully watches and ping-pongs his eyes in turn. (This might be chased with the intonation, “You are getting sleeeeeepy...”)

Unlike most stereotypical images of mind alteration—“Psychiatric help, 5 cents” anyone?—this one is real. An obscure type of therapy known as EMDR, or Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, is gaining ground as a potential treatment for people who have experienced severe forms of trauma.

Here’s the idea: The person is told to focus on the troubling image or negative thought while simultaneously moving his or her eyes back and forth. To prompt this, the therapist might move his fingers from side to side, or he might use a tapping or waving of a wand. The patient is told to let her mind go blank and notice whatever sensations might come to mind. These steps are repeated throughout the session.